Goal Setting for Modern Entrepreneurs | Brian Tracy

Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today I want to talk to you about goal setting tips for the modern entrepreneur. Perhaps the most important single skill you can develop to become a successful business person. Today's entrepreneur has a wealth of information and resources at their fingertips for starting up a business. Information is being created at a rate faster than ever dreamed possible. In fact, an astonishing 90% of all information ever recorded by humans has been recorded within the last two years, if you can imagine. And that rate is only increasing. So to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need persistence and tenacity, but you also need to weed out the distractions that slow down your growth and your business's progress. Now, since most entrepreneurs start their businesses on the side, finding that work life balance can be a challenge. That's why goal setting for entrepreneurs can make all the difference. If you set clear and actionable goals, you'll achieve more success with less stress and know when and how to tune out distractions that pull you away from your goals. In fact, my daughter is living with me right now and just yesterday we were talking about her setting goals for her business and her financial life, exactly using these same ideas that we are to help her start her business. Business goals are an extremely important part of becoming a successful entrepreneurs. I think the most important thing of all. I love goal setting because I've had people from all over the world tell me that goal setting made them rich. Just the very act of writing and thinking through their goals and working on them every day totally transformed their life and made them very successful. So for most entrepreneurs, business success doesn't happen overnight. The majority of small businesses are wait two to three years before beginning to see a profit. And most aren't considered truly successful until seven to ten years down the road. It takes time, it takes hard work. Entrepreneurs are only successful because they're impatient to be successful. But it takes much more time than you thought. And this only applies to those entrepreneurs who stay committed to their goals. Since 20% of small businesses fail within the first two years and only 25% will still have their doors open after 15 or more years. So failure is a very common factor that goes along with business success. And your job is to make sure that you are not one of the failures, you are one of the successes. So what makes the difference? The key factor is setting business goals. It means having a clear idea of where you're going and how to get there. The right goals allow you to map out where you're headed and how you're going to get there. Now, these goals Focus your attention on the small, significant steps you'll have to take to reach your larger overarching goal, entrepreneurial success. And by entrepreneurial success, we mean that you make a lot of money and that you have a great life. So you want to set business goals like famous entrepreneurs. If you're setting goals for your business, then you're probably dreaming big. And you also understand that getting there is achieved by small steps along the way. Some of the most famous and successful entrepreneurs started out with very little, sometimes with nothing, and are booming successes today. And there's a lot to be learned from their example. Sam Walden, for example, purchased his first Ben Franklin franchise with a $25,000 loan from his father in law. This is a small store where they provided you with all of the stock and all of the ways of accounting and so on. And they called it the Ben Franklin franchise and you've probably never heard of it. So after owning 15 stores and seeing that the company didn't want to expand to small towns, Walton pursued opening his own chain of stores. His goal was to consistently keep the same business model of offering low everyday prices to his customers. Fifty years later, Walmart is the largest retailer in the US And Jim and Alice Walton are each valued at a staggering $54 billion in net worth. Now, how are entrepreneurs goals different from other goals? Well, it's much harder to recover from a missed entrepreneurial goal than a missed personal goal. When goal setting, an entrepreneur needs to think. Think of their business, their customers, their employees and themselves. Their goals are complex and require careful planning and consistent planning. In other words, the process never stops. Now, here are seven goal setting tips for business success and how they differ from setting personal goals. First, identify what you need need the most help with. Nobody does it alone. While your overall business goal may be to increase profits, you must be able to identify the individual goals that will get you there. This may be attracting leads, improving product quality, increasing customer service, and so on. So start with the lowest hanging fruit that will have the biggest impact. And remember, everything is always cash flow. Cash flow, cash flow. Often, the smallest change in how you operate your business can have massive results. In fact, it's rumored that American Airlines saved a whopping $500,000 a year just by decreasing the number of olives that they served in a particular salad in their flights. Second, set smart goals. Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bounded. Five parts. If you're not sure where to start, check out my YouTube channel for some great videos on smart goals. Third, always keep your customer in mind when setting goals. The most successful entrepreneurs think about their customers morning, noon and night. Because your customers will determine whether you succeed or fail. Even though your goals are going to naturally be inward facing, meaning that you're focusing on your own goals, you also need to be thinking externally. Anytime you're setting a business goal to make a sale, you'll need to know your target audiences pain points and then fill that need. And remember, every product or service is designed to solve a problem or satisfy a need or take away a pain of some kind. And so to encourage repeat sales, you you'll need to focus not only on quality customer service, but your customers evolving needs not only what they need today, but what they will need tomorrow and next week and next year. So a key to being customer focused is to ensure that you bring clarity to every decision that you make. If your business decisions and strategies aren't clear, you'll quickly confuse and alienate your customers. Now here's a wonderful trick and it is to imagine it comes from Albert Einstein. Imagine that you are explaining your business to a six year old child and the six year old child has to understand clearly why they should buy from you rather than buy from someone else or not buy at all. So always think in terms of a six year old child listening to what you say. Fourth Set milestones to track your progress. Identifying milestones that you can check off as you achieve them motivates you to press forward and helps you to set bigger and bolder goals. Milestones. It's a remarkable thing that when you feel you're making progress, it gives you energy, it gives you enthusiasm, it makes you more positive. It you gives, it makes you happier, it drives you forward. So it's wonderful to set the milestones and then as you reach those milestones, sort of acknowledge it and then go on to the next milestone. Now, but that doesn't mean tracking your financial milestones. Think of all the different ways your company can grow and try to challenge yourself to track everything like employee satisfaction and customer retention. What is the most important sale? I ask in my seminars and the answer is the second sale. You see, you get the first sale by special discounts and bonuses and offerings that are special even where you lose money. But it's the second sale where the customer tells you that you satisfy them on the first sale. The fifth key is reward yourself when you hit a major milestone. Celebrating your small successes with something you enjoy or someone that you like and gives you relief and helps you to remember the why of your big picture. Plan business is hard work, especially if you're an entrepreneur. But you don't want to miss the forest for the trees. And taking a break to reward your major milestones is a great excuse to give yourself a break. To look at the big picture, the average successful entrepreneur works about 60 hours a week. That's about 10 hours a day times six days. The average entrepreneur works much, much harder and longer hours than the average person for a long, long time. But when they become successful, the payoff can be extraordinary. Now here's the sixth key is be flexible and don't be afraid to pivot when things change. I read books, magazines, newspapers every day, including just a few minutes ago, and they all talk about flexibility and being open to changing and doing something new and different. When the market changes, Remember, sort of like a bullfighter, you've got to be very fast on your feet because the bull, the competitive market is fast on its feet as well. So the market changes often. So your goals may have to change too. Keep up with market trends and remain flexible so that you know when it's time to change course. To be a successful entrepreneur, one piece of information can change your life. I stumbled across one idea in reading business magazines three or four years ago that translated into more than a million dollars in profits and revenues. So read Success magazine, read Entrepreneur magazine, read Inc Magazine, read the business magazines like Fortune and Forbes and Businessweek. You've got to be informed. Remember, business is sort of like being like a doctor of Sales, a doctor of Revenue and you have to continue to read. Interesting aside, by the way, is that the very best professionals in every field spend 1, 2, 3 hours every single day reading and upgrading their skills in their field. If ever you work with somebody who doesn't upgrade their skills continually, if you are thinking of hiring them, move on because they will not be helpful to you. Find someone who's aggressive as an entrepreneur in their business and this person will be able to help you far more than a person who does not do the reading. And lastly, find an accountability partner. Having a friend or a colleague or a fellow entrepreneur who's also trying to achieve a similar goal can challenge you to stay on track and continue to progress towards your business goals. Your road to business success will require purposeful, persistent focus and include plenty of challenges. But the right tools and support and knowledge will propel you to where you want to be. Now here's an important point is the most successful entrepreneurs engaged in masterminding is they join organizations made up of other entrepreneurs. They get together regularly with other business people. They share ideas and problems and difficulties and tell them what they're doing and ask them what they are doing for themselves. So therefore, the more input that you can get from other people who are working towards similar goals, increasing sales and profitability, the faster you'll be successful yourself. I've heard many stories of a person who went to a business meeting and heard one idea that transformed their business forever. And it can happen to you as well. So get a head start by downloading my free Smart Goals Template. This will help you to identify clear goals, stay on track, use your time and resources wisely, and maintain the motivation that you need to achieve the entrepreneurial success that you're looking for. Remember, succeeding does not have to be a hit or miss process. Succeeding can be damn near guaranteed if you will do all the things that we're talking about regularly. Just like if you want to be physically fit, exercise all the time. If you want to be financially fit in business, you practice these ideas all the time. Now I love to hear from you. So my question today is how can you set goals like an entrepreneur? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you about goal setting, subscribe to my channel like this video and share this video with your friends. Don't forget to click the button on the screen for a free gift. Thanks again for watching.